As you'll be aware, I haven't posted in a while. I've been busy managing my fund and attending to other priorities. I didn't/don't have any explicit plan to reboot the blog near term. I have, however, been doing some research on Georgia of late, and felt passionately enough about my ideas and the potential contribution I could make to the issue (and its importance), that I started to pen a twitter thread about it. That thread inadvertently grew into a long blog-worthy essay (brevity is not one of my attributes), so I thought I might as well post it on my blog as well, for what it's worth. Thanks to all my readers, and keep a look out as I may be back one day! LT3000
----
The following is a long post on what is really going on in Georgia. By way of preface, this is not really about Georgia. It’s about Russia. Otherwise, few fucks would be given about an innocuous law passed by a nation of 3.7m people that most can’t find on a map. The law is innocuous as all it requires is NGOs disclose the origins of their funding; the EU is currently working on a very similar law and the US already has such requirements enacted (FARA).
Over the
past few years and behind closed doors, there has been consternation expressed
to Georgia by the US/EU about their unwillingness to take a harder line against
Russia – such as failure to implement sanctions (though it is complying with
Western sanctions). These concerns are becoming more acute now that Ukraine is evidently
losing the war, and the West is becoming increasingly desperate.
The ruling
Georgian Dream party – though pro EU, and having presided over extremely rapid
economic growth and impressive Western-style institutional development – is trying
to avoid the “Ukrainization” of Georgia and does not want to needlessly invoke
Russia’s ire. It does not believe – correctly – that taking a hostile approach
to Russia is in the nation’s interests – only those of its EU/US partners who don’t
care about Georgia and Georgians – only how Georgia can be used to further
pressure Russia.
Given the
Georgian Dream’s “uncooperative” approach to isolating Russia, the US (in this
case in cooperation with the EU) has been doing what it always does when a
regime frustrates its great power maneuverings – it tries to change the
government. Occasionally it does this through military force (Iraq), but in the
majority of cases it is via identifying organizations (e.g. NGOs) or other groups
– political, ethnic, religious, etc – that are hostile to the current government
and also want to overthrow it. It then proceeds to fund, arm, and train those
groups, to give them maximum chance of success.
This is why
the US government has been found to have often aligned with and funded many
malign groups over the years, in places like Syria, and have often ended up
funding and supporting leaders to power that have subsequently become tyrants. It’s
not that they approve of these groups or individuals’ ideology or ethics – it is
that there is a shared short-term alignment of interests in removing the
incumbent from power.
In addition
to providing funding, and in some cases training and arms, if and when events
on the ground explode, they can also provide international political cover in
the form of official rhetoric and narrative control that slants the reportage of
events. This can take the form of, for instance, describing rebel groups as “democracy-loving
freedom fighters”; condemning measured actions taken to restore order as “police
brutality”; and claiming that the radical actions of political minorities
represent the country as a whole. This is what is presently going on in
Georgia.
In the case
of Georgia, interference is being achieved through an army of NGOs, which
number 25,000 in Georgia – an anomalously high number for such a small nation
(3.7m). Selected NGOs are funded by Western governments, and they influence
their activities both by choosing which groups they fund, and controlling who
runs them by exercising their control over the purse strings. These puppet NGOs
then proceed to carpet bomb the local media and civil society with anti-government
media and rhetoric, while also feeding out slanted narratives to the global
press, who often rely on local NGOs for their information due to a lack of
their own boots on the ground.
Such groups
work to cultivate a sense of grievance on the ground and will seize on any
opportunity to condemn the government and protest its actions. When opportunity
presents, as it has with the recent bill, they will then actively engage in
the organization and funding of protests, and then energetically work to
escalate those protests, including provoking reactions from security forces
that can then be used as propagandized media around the excessive use of force,
and paint the incumbent as an oppressive tyrant, rather than an elected body
acting in accordance with the rule of law. It also provides raw material that
can be used by official US channels to condemn the incumbent, advocate for
sanctions, and in extreme cases even resort to military intervention. If the situation is inflamed enough, it can sometimes
escalate to a full-blown revolution and/or provoke a civil
war.
This is
exactly what happened in 2014 with Ukraine’s Maidan coup, and in many of the
other “colour revolutions” which have plagued the region (both successful and
failed). In Ukraine, after successfully removing a democratically-elected but insufficiently
anti-Russian administration from power, the newly installed administration –
which the US actively participated in putting together in the wake of the
revolution – see the leaked “Fuck the EU” Nuland-Pyatt audio files – immediately
proceeded to try to kick Russia out of its Sevastopol navel military base by
invalidating the lease. This is why Russia annexed Crimea, and led us directly
down the path that has led to the current war.
While it is
true that significant grass roots participation is necessary for the engineering
of a revolution to be viable, it does not need to be a majority of the electorate
– a small fired-up minority will suffice. In the case of Georgia, at peak there
have been about 30k protestors present according to Western media sources, or
less than 1% of Georgia’s population, and a not insignificant number of that 1%
likely work for, or are affiliated with, anti-government NGOs. And many of the
rests’ own organic views will have been meaningfully shaped by those NGO’s own
promulgated media and rhetoric.
While organic
discontent may exist, large scale rallies and protests don’t just spontaneously
happen – particularly over an issue as innocuous as NGOs being required to
disclose the origins of their funding, and amidst a booming economy no less. They require
organization and funding to catalyze, and rhetoric to inflame and amplify, and
the NGOs (and Western officials also desirous of regime change, as we have seen)
participate in this. If you are confused about why this seemingly innocuous issue
has been so explosive, it is because said NGOs and Western officials have actively
participated in making it so.
Furthermore,
the response has been particularly energetic as it hits close to home – the
said NGOs are well aware they are up to no good and are therefore particularly
opposed to improved transparency because it threatens their own interests (and
paychecks). Meanwhile, Western officials are so obstinately opposed to it because
it will frustrate their efforts to interfere in Georgian politics and force it
to become more anti-Russian.
NGOs and
Western officials have succeeded in branding the bill the “Russia law” and it
representing Georgia “turning away from the EU” – a narrative which, as usual,
has been blindly accepted and repeated without any critical thinking by the
Western media – despite the fact that the bill is nothing like its Russian
counterpart, and is in fact more innocuous than similar foreign influence laws
already in force in the UK and US, and under contemplation in the EU.
Moreover, transparency
is a fundamental EU value, and the current Georgian administration is pro EU. The
NGO/Western rhetoric bears no relationship to the facts, but they are not
interested in the facts, democracy, the rule of law, or moral principles. They
are interested in protecting their funding sources from scrutiny, protecting
their own salaries, and ousting the incumbent government so Georgian policy can
become more actively hostile to Russia, to serve the interests of the EU and US (or at least bullying it into compliance with US/EU preferences).
The
Georgian Dream is well aware of what is going on (as is Russia, having seen and
objected to the same thing happen in Ukraine), which is why GD is taking its present
bold and courageous action and standing up to a tremendous amount of, frankly
odious, international and NGO pressure. The move to push this legislation now,
six months out from elections (though GD claim the bill enjoys 60-80% support
from the electorate), may have been catalyzed by another foiled attempt at a
revolution in late 2023, as well as growing behind-closed-doors strong arming
by the US/EU to “get with the program” of isolating Russia. They realize they
need to act before it is too late.
Georgian Dream
is pursing a policy course that is of critical importance to Georgia’s future. If
they fail and are overthrown, or are browbeaten into compliance with West's hawkish anti-Russian agenda, it will open the door to a second front in the
Russo-Ukraine war. This could very easily lead to the “Ukrainization” of Georgia,
up to and including a full-blown Russian invasion, and when that happens, NATO
will be nowhere to be seen. Georgia will be swallowed by Russia and cease to
exist. And given Georgia’s remarkable economic progress and Western-style
institutional development over recent decades, with 80% of its population being
pro EU, it will be a damn shame.
Recent
events have been described as critical to Georgia’s European future. They indeed
are, just not in the way conventional Western media sources portray it.
